


Much Unseen is Also Here

by faobhar



Category: The Exorcist (TV)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-11-22
Updated: 2017-11-22
Packaged: 2019-02-05 12:55:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,419
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12795015
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/faobhar/pseuds/faobhar
Summary: In the middle their six month road-trip, Marcus and Tomas begin to receive postcards from someone in New Orleans.The first time it happens, Tomas is checking them into a motel off the highway,  cupped in the palm of the Blue Ridge mountains.





	Much Unseen is Also Here

**Author's Note:**

> A road trip story. Title from Walt Whitman's 'Song of the Open Road'.

 

* * *

 

The first time it happens, Tomas is checking them into a motel off the highway,  cupped in the palm of the Blue Ridge mountains.

It's late. Tomas doesn't really know where they are, aside from deep enough in Virginia that  all the vowels seem to run together whenever someone talks.

“All I've got is a room with two queens,” the woman behind the counter  says without looking up from the computer. “That alright, hon?” 

The motel lobby looks like it hasn't been updated since the early 90's, and neither does the woman behind the counter. Her eyeshadow matches the teal-and-magenta lacquer of the desk, and the fluorescent buzz of the overheads bring back the headache, that started about a hundred miles up the road, with a vengeance.

Tomas opens his mouth to respond, but a voice cuts in from somewhere behind him: “That'll suit us just fine.”

Tomas nearly jumps—he had left Marcus with the car in the parking lot, and hadn’t heard him come in. The woman looks up at the accent—surprised at either Marcus' sudden appearance, his foreignness, or both.

“After the day we've had I imagine we could sleep just about anywhere,” Marcus smiles.

The woman--her name tag, Tomas sees, says _Debbie_ \--smiles back. Perhaps, Tomas thinks, because she has never returned home to find that Marcus has picked the locks, riffled through the sock drawer, and commandeered the couch.

“Oh,” Debbie says, peering at Marcus with a curious expression, like he is a familiar face that she can’t quite place.

Then she looks at Tomas.  Her eyes dart to the collar at his neck. Then back to Marcus.

“I'm sorry, dear but I'm awful with accents--you're not from _England_ , are you?” She asks, saying _England_ in the same way someone might say _Mars_.

“Guilty,” Marcus says, though the smile looks a little more forced this time around. “Born and bred. Why--” 

“Oh,” Debbie says again, her face lighting up as she slaps one hand against the counter. “Oh, I think I have something for you two.” 

“Give me one second,” She holds up a single, claw-like finger before disappearing underneath the desk.

“Strangest thing,” her disembodied voice says, trailing off: “But I think I’ve got mail for you.” 

Tomas glances at Marcus, because he doesn't think this sort of thing is a normal part of being a vagabond exorcist on a road trip, but he's also been doing this for a lot less longer than Marcus has. So he can't be sure.

Marcus doesn't look at Tomas though--just watches the desk with an inscrutable expression. 

“There it is,” Debbie returns, slightly out of breath and and slapping a postcard down on the desk. “Like I said, strangest thing.” 

The postcard is old-looking, the colors faded to sepia tones like it's been steeped in coffee. In cheery, block letters it bids them ' _greetings from...NEW ORLEANS!_ '.

They all stare at it for a bit. Then, because Debbie doesn't explain and Marcus doesn't do anything except stare at the thing, Tomas finally just reaches out and flips it over.

Marcus snorts when he reads the address line--“ _To: Handsome Priest and English Companion_ ” followed by the motel’s address-- then frowns.

Below the address is a date-- _today’s_ date. And time--11:56 pm.

Tomas glances at his watch--11:54 pm--and frowns too.

“It came in with the mail about a month ago,” Debbie says. “ Thought it must have been a prank. Then you showed up and I thought—well, you can see for yourself.”

In beautiful, looping cursive, there is a short note:

 

_“Dear Tomas and Marcus,_

_We hope you are well. Virginia is beautiful this time of year. We are looking forward to your visit, but please be sure to get plenty of rest and take care of yourselves on the road!_

_Sincerely,_

_Gracie, Grace, and GiGi.”_

 

“What--”Tomas says.

But Marcus swipes the postcard off the desk, vanishing it somewhere into the mysterious depths of his leather jacket like a sleight of hand trick. Probably, Tomas thinks, tucking it in right next to the lockpicks.

“Nothing to worry about love,” Marcus assures her. “Someone’s idea of a joke.”

“But--”

“Just a friend taking the piss,” Tomas swears Marcus becomes more aggressively British as a sort of defense mechanism, charming bored Virginian motel owners into accepting hand-waving explanations: “I promise. Now about that room.”

 

–--

 

“What was that?”

Marcus shakes his head and Tomas has to reign in his irritation. He’s exhausted. He’s sore in places he didn’t think could be sore thanks to hours of sitting in the car. And he’s sick of being kept out of the loop--of being treated like a child.

“A friend?” Tomas asks once they’re inside their room. “I saw your face--you _lied_.”

“Good thing I’m not a priest then, isn’t it?”

Tomas opens his mouth to say something. Or to yell something, maybe. It’s not just the postcard, either. It’s _everything._

Tomas doesn’t know where they are or where  they’re going, and Marcus won’t say. All they seem to do is drive down endless roads, and lately the inside of the truck has started to feel like a cage--with Tomas, trapped and crazy, and wondering what he’s even doing out here.

He turns to face Marcus and Marcus sighs. Away from Debbie and the front desk, he looks as exhausted and frayed around the edges as Tomas feels.

“How would someone know where we were going to be today?” Tomas asks, reminding himself to be calm.

Reminding himself that he is an Ordained Leader of the Church, sworn to a Holy Life and that Ordained Leaders of the Church--sworn to a Holy Life-- are patient, and kind, and compassionate and they do not _start shit_.

“I don’t know,” Marcus says.

Before they've even dumped their bags on their beds, he’s disappeared out into the night with Tomas' cell phone, the postcard, and the kind of expression that only ever precedes a long phone call to Bennett.

 

\---

 

Tomas wakes sometime in the early morning to find Marcus folded into one of the motel chairs, which he has dragged half-way in front of the door. He’s must have fallen asleep while sketching feathers in that bible of his, since the book is still open on his lap with a pencil.

He has his boots on, and a rosary coiled around one wrist. The cross looks like it's made of two steel nails-- welded together, wickedly sharp.

 

* * *

 

Sometimes Tomas looks up to find Marcus watching him, like he'd forgotten Tomas was there.

It’s become  fewer and further between as the days go by, but sometimes Marcus will still turn around or wake up looking surprised—like he'd thought he’d reached out and pulled Tomas out of the air instead of the messy suburban sprawl of the city.

 

\---

 

They exorcise a boy in Georgia.

It's wretched, and the boy is Luis’ age, so Tomas keeps looking at him and seeing his nephew there instead.

But afterward, Tomas is driving them down an empty stretch of highway and there's this electric, chemical hum of adrenaline under Tomas’ skin.

Marcus is asleep in the passenger seat, twitching every now and then like a dog chasing a dream rabbit. There aren't any streetlights and it's cloudy, so the headlights are the only thing Tomas can see for miles and miles. He's got the radio on low with windows down, and the night air smells like flowers.

Tomas feels like he's just taken the first full gasp of breath since he stepped out his front door in Chicago. Like he could just keep driving forever and forever, the road rising endlessly to meet them.

He feels alive.

_This is real,_ he thinks.

_This is all real._

 

* * *

 

 

The second postcard finds them at a greasy little truck stop dinner off of I-20.

Two ratty menus are pushed across the counter by a fry cook with a clint-eastwood squint and a face like a cracked leather belt. The man half-turned away from them when he stops-- does a double take. Glancing to Tomas, to Tomas' collar, then back to Marcus.

Tomas has just enough time to think: _this again?_

Then the Fry cook is drumming his gnawed-up pen against the counter like there’s a song stuck in his head, but he can’t remember the lyrics.

“Handsome Priest,” The frycook says.

Since he's looking at Marcus as he says it, it's unclear if the guy's expressing a personal opinion on Tomas' attractiveness, congratulating Marcus the same way someone might say 'cute dog, where'd you find him' , or what.

“...Thank you?” Tomas ventures, but the fry cook just ignores him, turning to point the pen at Marcus instead.

“Ya'll ain't British, are you?”

When Marcus opens his mouth to reply, the Frycook breaks into a grin before Marcus can even finish his sentence. Marcus smiles back, baffled, but letting himself be charmed by this unexpected—and all the more charming for it-- giddiness.

Tomas doesn't know why, but this irritates him.

“Hang on, we got something in the mail for you two. Must have come in a couple of days back. Let me just grab your order, then I'll bring it all over together.”

After he vanishes into the kitchen with their orders Tomas looks over the Marcus, who shrugs.

When the fry cook comes back with Marcus' depressing breakfast of black coffee and toast balanced on one arm and Thomas' omelet on the other, he slaps something onto the counter between the plates.

“There it is. Showed up in the mail just like I said.”

Tomas makes a grab for it, but Marcus gets there first.

This time, the card is a small screen print of an alligator head—or maybe a crocodile, Tomas isn’t sure—with a lazy smile and single, gilded eye that winks in the sunlight as Marcus examines it. ' _The Big Easy_ ' is printed in small block letters below the print, and the message written out in looped cursive on the other side of the card is just as cryptic as the last.

Like the last one, the thing is addressed to _“Handsome Priest and British Companion”_ , with the date and time scrawled below the address of the truck stop diner.

 

_“Dear Marcus and Tomas,_

_Dear boys, we hope you are well. We know you must be very busy, but please don’t wait too long to come down to see us in THE BIG EASY._

_Sincerely,_

_Grace, Gracie, and GiGi_

_P.S. Try the cherry pie--it’s divine!”_

 

“Hm,” Marcus says. He makes to tuck the postcard into his pocket and, undoubtedly, to dismiss any further discussion on the topic. Again.

_No_ , Tomas thinks.  _Not this time._

Because two months ago, Tomas Ortega learned demons are real and his life has been one long experience of nonstop _weird_ ever since.

He's seen a girl rotting from the inside out, breaking chains to levitate three feet off the ground like _Ghostbusters_. He's seen a woman nearly tear a man's arms off with her mind.

And he’s been on what has to be one of the weirdest road trips in the history of road trips; guided alternately by Bennett and a series of fever-dream visions that are put into Tomas’ head by--depending on who you asked--God, demons, the devil, or maybe even a remarkably precognisant brain tumor.

So would it _kill_ Marcus to explain something properly for once?

Tomas snatches the postcard before it can be vanished into the depths of Marcus’ leather jacket like the last one, waving it over Marcus's depressing toast.

“Is this some sort of thing? One of _your_ things--” Tomas asks, ducking his head closer to hiss: “some sort of exorcist thing?”

Instead of answering right away, Marcus watches him calmly for a beat.

“One of _our_ things, I should think.” Marcus finally says, turning back to his coffee.

Except the way Marcus says it, It’s half a question and Tomas sees something--Doubt? Disappointment?--flit across his face before it settles into a carefully blank expression. Some of the fight goes out of Tomas--It's a little harder to stay frustrated with someone who so obviously expects to be abandoned.

“I don't know,” Marcus says, insisting-- “I really don’t--when Tomas looks skeptical.

He reaches out and plucks the card out of Tomas’ fingers, setting it down: “So maybe stop waving the thing around like a flag, yeah? Someone's going to think you've had a fit.”

The battery in Marcus' flip phone is dead, so Tomas hands over his without a word.

Marcus disappears into the lot to call Bennett, leaving Tomas to stare at the postcard, willing it to offer up some clue to its mysterious existence. When no clue is forthcoming, he motions the fry cook back over and orders dessert while Marcus is still outside.

Whoever the writer is, they were right about the cherry pie.

 

* * *

 

The third time it happens, they’re at a bar.

Tomas is starving and orders at least half the menu from the bartender to spread out over the table they’ve claimed in the corner. And yeah, most of it’s fried and it won’t do his heart any favors, but even priests deserve to be happy sometimes. Besides, they’re both looking a bit drawn these days, and just because Marcus is obviously too sadly tortured and tragic and _crazy_ to properly look after himself, doesn’t mean Tomas isn’t going to.

As he makes his way back to the table, Marcus is nodding to someone on the phone, speaking too low for Tomas to hear.

“Bennett want us in New Orleans,” Marcus tells him after he’s hung up.

“Oh,” Tomas says. ”Because of the postcards?”

“No,” Marcus says. “Worryingly, we still don’t know who--or what--is sending those.”

“Try these,” Tomas says, pushing the basket of fried pickles in Marcus’ direction. “So what is is?”

Marcus makes a face, claims the basket of soft-baked pretzels for his own instead, and explains that one of Bennett's contacts, the chaplain of a psychiatric hospital, has voiced concerns about a presence on the ward.

“So... one of the patients is possessed,” Tomas guesses.

“Maybe,” Marcus starts, then cuts himself off--looking at something over Tomas’ shoulder.

Tomas turns to find the bartender making her way toward the table. There is an apologetic smile on her face and a postcard in one of her hands. Marcus stomach sinks. 

 

This time the message is short:

_“See you soon!”_


End file.
